Chapter VII: The Italian Influence (2)

That the _Morgante Maggiore_ is a burlesque poem is due not so much to deliberate design on Pulci’s part as to the unconscious reflection of his boisterous, full-blooded, yet at the same time, meditative nature. It is unwise to attribute to him any motive beyond that of amusing his audience. In spite of its apparent irreverence, the _Morgante_ was probably not planned as a satire on chivalry or on the church, Pulci--“the lively, affecting, hopeful, charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci,” as Hunt called him--was at bottom kindly and sympathetic, and his work displays a robust geniality and good-humor which had undoubtedly some influence on _Don Juan_. We rarely find Pulci in a fury; at times his merriment is not far from Rabelaisian, however always without a trace of indignation, for his levity and playfulness seem genuine. This very tolerance is perhaps the product of Renaissance skepticism, which viewed both dogmatism and infidelity with suspicion. Deep emotion, tragedy, and pathos are all to be met with in the _Morgante_, but each is counter-balanced by mockery, comedy, or realism. It is this recurring antithesis, this continual introduction of the grotesque into the midst of what is, by itself, dignified and serious, that is the distinctive peculiarity of Pulci’s manner. The mere turn of a phrase makes a situation absurd. There is no intensity about this Florentine; he espouses no theories and advocates no creeds; he is content to have his laugh and to set others chuckling.

This summary may be of service in suggesting one reason why, in the later cantos of _Don Juan_, we sometimes are met with a tolerance almost sympathetic, widely differing from the passionate narrowness of _English Bards_. Pulci, unlike Byron, was not a declared satirist; his theme was in the past, steeped in legend and myth; but something of his spirit, difficult to analyze as that spirit may be, tempered and modified the satire of the older Byron.

Byron’s first definite reference to Pulci occurs in a portion of _Don Juan_ written in November, 1819:

“Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,
Who sang when chivalry was not Quixotic,
And revelled in the fancies of the time,
True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, Kings despotic.”[239]

However, _Don Juan_, III, 45, presenting a possible parallelism with the _Morgante_, XVIII, 115, would indicate that Byron was familiar with Pulci’s poem at least some months before.[240] On February 7, 1820, he wrote Murray: “I am translating the first canto of Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_, and have half done it.”[241] In speaking of the completion of the translation, of which he was very proud, he told Murray, February 12, 1820: “You must print it side by side with the original Italian, because I wish the reader to judge of the fidelity; it is stanza for stanza, and often line for line, if not word for word.”[242] In the Preface to the translation, printed with it in _The Liberal_, July 30, 1823, Byron uttered his final word on the Italian writer: “Pulci may be regarded as the precursor and model of Berni altogether.... He is no less the founder of a new style of poetry lately sprung up in England. I allude to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft.” It is evident, then, that Byron estimated Pulci’s work very highly, that he was acquainted, probably, with the entire _Morgante Maggiore_ and had studied the first canto, at least, in detail, and that he considered him the original model of Berni and Frere.

It remains to point out specific qualities in manner and style which link the two poets together.[243] Towards the narrative portion of the _Morgante_, Byron seems to have been indifferent. In _Don Juan_ there is but one clear allusion to the Carolingian legend:

“Just now, enough; but bye and bye I’ll prattle
Like Roland’s horn in Roncesvalles’ battle.”[244]

There is a fairly close parallel already pointed out between the response of a servant to Lambro in _Don Juan_, III, 45, and Margutte’s speech in the _Morgante_, XVIII, 115. There are, however, no other incidents in _Don Juan_ which resemble any part of the earlier poem.

Pulci’s realism, a quality which is usually in itself burlesque when it is applied to a romantic subject, is shown in his fondness for homely touches and minute details, in his use of words out of the street and proverbs from the lips of the populace. The interjection of the lower-class spirit into the poem helped to make the _Morgante_ in actuality what Frere had tried to produce in _The Monks, and the Giants_--a treatment of heroic characters and deeds by a bourgeois mind. The spectacle of the common vulgar details in the every-day life of men supposedly great naturally somewhat degrades the heroes. When Byron portrays General Suwarrow as

“Hero, buffoon, half-demon, and half-dirt,”[245]

he is following the methods of Pulci, who made his giants gluttons and his Rinaldo a master of Billingsgate.[246] In the _Morgante_ warriors are continually being put into ludicrous situations: Morgante fights his battles with a bell-clapper; Rinaldo knocks a Saracen into a bowl of soup[247]; and the same noble, turned robber, threatens to steal from St. Peter and to seize the mantles of St. Ursula and the Angel Gabriel.[248] Pulci compares Roncesvalles to a pot in much the same spirit that Byron likens a rainbow to a black eye.[249] Pulci is fond of cataloguing objects, especially the varieties of food served at banquets; and Byron shows the same propensity in describing in detail the viands provided for the feast of Haidée and Juan, and the dinner at Norman Abbey. Pulci’s realism is also manifest in his use of slang and the language of low life. In this respect, too, Byron is little behind him: Juan fires his pistol “into one assailant’s pudding”; slang phrases are frequently introduced into _Don Juan_, and elevated poetic style is made more vivid by contrast with intentionally prosaic passages.

Another peculiarity of Pulci is his tendency to make use of many Tuscan proverbs and to coin sententious apothegms of his own. The framework of the octave lends itself easily to compact maxims in the final couplet, and perhaps it is due to this fact that _Don Juan_ and the _Morgante_ are both crammed with epigrams. In Pulci’s poetry one meets on nearly every page with such apt sayings as

“La fede è fatta, come fa il solletico”[250]

and

“Co’ santi in chiesa, e co’ ghiotti in taverna.”[251]

One example out of the many in _Don Juan_ will suffice for quotation:--

“Adversity is the first path to truth.”[252]

Possibly the fact that the _Morgante_ was first recited to the members of Lorenzo’s circle is chiefly responsible for Pulci’s habit of turning often to his listeners, inviting them, as it were, to draw nearer and share his confidence. Thus he confesses:

“Non so se il vero appunto anche si disse;
Accetta il savio in fin la veria gloria;
E cosi seguirem la nostra storia.”[253]

Byron speaks repeatedly in this sort of mocking apology:

“If my thunderbolt not always rattles,
Remember, reader! you have had before,
The worst of tempests and the best of battles.”[254]

Both poets assume, at times, an affected modesty: thus at the very end of the _Morgante_ Pulci asserts that he is not presumptuous:

“Io non domando grillanda d’alloro,
Di che i Greci e i Latini chieggon corona....
Anzi non son prosuntuoso tanto,
Quanto quel folle antico citarista
A cui tolse gia Apollo il vivo ammanto;...
E cio ch’ io penso colla fantasia,
Di piacere ad ognuno e ’l mio disegno.”[255]

So Byron refers to his own lack of ambition:

“I perch upon an humbler promontory,
Amidst Life’s infinite variety;
With no great care for what is nicknamed Glory.”[256]

At the end of nearly every canto of the _Morgante_ is a promise of continuation, so phrased as to seem conventional: _e. g._,

“Come io diro ne l’altro mio cantare.”

The same custom became common with Byron, in such lines as,

“Let this fifth canto meet with due applause,
The sixth shall have a touch of the sublime.”[257]

There is, however, one important distinction between the two poets in their use of the digression: Pulci employs it for cursory comment on his story, or for chat about himself; Byron utilizes it not only for these purposes, but also for the expression of satire. It is in his digressions that he speaks out directly against individuals, institutions, and society in general. The _Morgante_ is a tale, with an occasional remark by the author; _Don Juan_ is a monologue, sustained by a narrative framework.

Pulci’s comparison of his poetry to a boat is introduced so frequently that it may possibly have suggested the figure to Byron. A typical instance of its usage may be quoted in the lines:--

“Io me n’andro con la barchetta mia,
Quanto l’acqua comporta un picciol legno.”[258]

Byron’s employment of the metaphor is also somewhat frequent:--

“At the least I have shunned the common shore,
And leaving land far out of sight, would skim
The Ocean of Eternity: the roar
Of breakers has not daunted my slight, trim,
But _still_ seaworthy skiff; and she may float,
Where ships have foundered, as doth many a boat.”[259]

It should be added that the brief “grace before meat,” so apparently truely devotional in phraseology, which Pulci prefixed to each of his cantos, and the equally orthodox epilogues in which he gave a benediction to his readers, are his own peculiarity, borrowed unquestionably from the street improvisatori. There is nothing corresponding to them in _Don Juan_.

Both Pulci and Byron were men of wide reading, and not averse to displaying and making use of their information. Pulci treats the older poets without reverence: he quotes Dante’s “dopo la dolorosa rotta” without acknowledgment[260]; he burlesques the famous phrase about Aristotle by having Morgante call Margutte “il mæstro di color che sanno”; and he alludes to Petrarch with a wink:--

“O sommo amore, o nuova cortesia!
Vedi che forse ognun si crede ancora,
Che questo verso del Petrarca fa:
Ed è gia tanto, e’ lo disse Rinaldo;
Ma chi non ruba è chiamato rubaldo.”[261]

This recalls Byron’s exhortation at the end of _Don Juan_, I, when, after quoting four lines from Southey, he adds:

“The first four rhymes are Southey’s every line:
For God’s sake, reader! take them not for mine.”

In a similar way Byron gives four lines from Campbell’s _Gertrude of Wyoming_, and comments upon them in _Don Juan_, I, 88–89.

This discussion would be incomplete if it did not mention Pulci’s fondness for philosophical reflection, meditations on life and death, on joy and sorrow. Volpi has attempted to demonstrate that Pulci, like many so-called humorists, was really, under the mask, a sad man. In making good this thesis he takes such lines as these as indicative of Pulci’s true attitude towards the problems of existence:--

“Questa nostra mortal caduca vista
Fasciata ē sempre d’un oscuro velo;
E spesso il vero scambia alia menzogna;
Poi si risveglia, come fa chi sogna.”[262]

However this may be, it is certain that Pulci, in his more thoughtful moods, inclined to pessimism and intellectual scepticism.

“Pulci’s versification,” says Foscolo, “is remarkably fluent; yet he is deficient in melody.” Another critic, the author of the brief note in the _Parnaso Italiano_, mentions his rapidity and his compression: “Tu troverai pochi poeti, che viaggino so velocemente, come il Pulci, il qualo in otti versi dice spesso piu di otte cose.” For this fluency and its corresponding lack of rhythm, the conversational tone of the _Morgante_ is largely responsible. The many colloquial digressions and the use of common idioms hinder any approach to a grand style. Pulci’s indifference to the strict demands of metre, his employment of abrupt and disconnected phrases, and his frequent sacrifice of melody to vigor and compactness, are also characteristic of Byron’s method in his Italian satires. Although _Don Juan_ contains some of Byron’s most musical passages, it nevertheless gives the impression of having been, like the _Morgante_, composed for an audience, the speaker being, perhaps, governed by rough notes, but tempted from his theme into extemporaneous observations, and caring so little for regularity or unity of structure that he feels no compunction about obeying the inclination of the moment. It is not without some acuteness that he alludes to,

“Mine irregularity of chime,
Which rings what’s uppermost of new or hoary,
Just as I feel the _Improvvisatore_.”[263]

Specifically in the field of satire, Pulci’s work, important though it was in some features of style and manner,[264] exercised its greatest influence on Byron’s mood. The chastening effect of Byron’s life on his poetic genius had made him peculiarly receptive to the spirit of Pulci’s poem; and accordingly the Italian poet taught him to take life and his enemies somewhat less seriously, to be more tolerant and more genial, to make playfulness and humor join with vituperation in his satire. Byron’s satiric spirit, through his contact with Pulci, became more sympathetic, and therefore more universal.

To Berni, whom he, at one time, considered to be the true master of the Italian burlesque _genre_, Byron has few references. We have seen how he was induced to revise his first opinion and to recognize in Pulci “the precursor and model of Berni altogether.” In the advertisement to the translation of the _Morgante_ he asserted that Berni, in his _rifacimento_, corrected the “harsh style” of Boiardo. These meagre data, however, furnish no clue to the possible influence of Berni’s work upon _Don Juan_.

Francesco Berni (1496?-1535)[265] is important here chiefly because of his _rifacimento_, or revision, of Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_. In accomplishing this task he completely made over Boiardo’s romance by refining the style, polishing the verse-structure, inserting lengthy digressions of his own and following a scheme instituted by Ariosto, prefacing each canto with a sort of essay in verse. Berni’s purpose, indeed, was to make the _Innamorato_ worthy of the _Furioso_. His version, however, owing probably to the malice of some enemy, has reached us only in a mutilated form. As it stands, nevertheless, it possesses certain features which distinguish it from the work of Pulci on the one hand and that of Casti on the other.

The influence which Berni may have had on Byron’s satires comes mainly from two features of the former’s work: his introductions to separate cantos, and his admirable style and versification. It was Berni’s habit to soliloquize before beginning his story: thus Canto IX of the _Innamorato_ commences with a philosophical disquisition on the unexpected character of most human misfortunes, leading, by a natural step, to the plot itself. So, in _Don Juan_, only one canto--the second--begins with the tale itself; every other has a preliminary discussion of one sort or another.[266] It was also Berni’s custom to take formal leave of his readers at the end of each canto, and to add a promise of what was to come.[267] This habit, all but universal with the Italian narrative poets, Byron followed, although his farewell occurs sometimes even before the very last stanza. A typical example may be quoted:

“It is time to ease
This Canto, ere my Muse perceives fatigue.
The next shall ring a peal to shake all people,
Like a bob-major from a village steeple.”[268]

Berni’s style and diction are far superior to Pulci’s. Count Giammaria Mazzuchelli, in the edition of Berni in _Classici Italiani_, says of this feature of his work: “La, facilita della rima congiunta alia naturallezza dell’ espressione, e la vivacita de’ pensieri degli scherzi uniti a singolare coltura nello stile sono in lui si maravigliose, che viene egli considerate come il capo di si fatta poesia, la quale percio ha presa da lui la denominazione, e suol chimarsi Bernesca.” He alone of the three Italian burlesque writers considered, succeeded in creating a masterpiece of literary art.[269] In this respect, then, his influence on Byron may have been salutary.

Henri Beyle (1783–1842), the self-styled M. Stendhal, is responsible for the theory, since repeated by other critics, that Byron’s Italian satires owe much to the work of the Venetian dialect poet, Pietro Buratti (1772–1832). When Beyle was with Byron in Milan in November, 1816, he heard Silvio Pellico speak to Byron of Buratti as a charming poet, who, every six months, by the governor’s orders, paid a visit to the prisons of Venice. Beyle’s account of the ensuing events runs as follows: “In my opinion, this conversation with Silvio Pellico gave the tone to Byron’s subsequent poetical career. He eagerly demanded the name of the bookseller who sold M. Buratti’s works; and as he was accustomed to the expression of Milanese bluntness, the question excited a hearty laugh at his expense. He was soon informed that if Buratti wished to pass his whole life in prison, the appearance of his works in print would infallibly lead to the gratification of his desires; and besides, where could a printer be found hardy enough to run his share of the risk?--The next day, the charming Contessina N. was kind enough to lend her collection to one of our party. Byron, who imagined himself an adept in the language of Dante and Ariosto, was at first rather puzzled by Buratti’s manuscripts. We read over with him some of Goldoni’s comedies, which enabled him at last to comprehend Buratti’s satires. I persist in thinking, that for the composition of _Beppo_, and subsequently of _Don Juan_, Byron was indebted to the reading of Buratti’s poetry.”[270]

A statement so plain by a man of Beyle’s authority deserves some attention. The first question which arises in connection with his assertion is naturally, what work Buratti had done before 1817, when Byron began the composition of _Beppo_.[271] After a dissipated boyhood, Buratti had become a member of the _Corte dei Busoni_, a pseudo-Academy which devoted its attention chiefly to satire. Although he was the author of several early lampoons, his first political satire was recited in 1813 among a party of friends at the home of Counsellor Galvagna in Venice. It is, in substance, a lamentation over the fate of Venice, with invective directed against the French army of occupation; Malamani styles it “a masterpiece of subtle sarcasm.” Eventually, through the treachery of apparent friends, the verses came to French ears, and Buratti was imprisoned for thirty days, his punishment, however, being somewhat lightened by powerful patrons. Shortly after this episode, he circulated some quatrains of a scurrilous nature on Filippo Scolari, a pedantic youth who had criticised contemporary literary men in a supercilious way. For these insults, Scolari tried to have Buratti apprehended again, but the latter, although he was forced to sign an agreement to write no more satires, received only a reprimand. During this period he had also directed several pasquinades at an eccentric priest, Don Domenico Marienis, who seems to have been a general object of ridicule in Venice.

Such, according to Malamani, was the extent of Buratti’s work up to 1816. His masterpiece, the _Storia dell’ Elefante_, was not written until 1819, too late to have been a strong influence even on _Don Juan_. Of this early satiric verse, no one important poem was composed in ottava rima. The poems, all short and of no especial value as literature, used the Venetian dialect, as far removed from pure Tuscan as Scotch is from English. Their most noticeable characteristic is their prevailing irony, a method of satire of which Byron only occasionally availed himself. With these facts in mind, and with the additional knowledge that Byron was unquestionably influenced by the burlesque writers, it is improbable that Beyle’s theory deserves any credence. Beyle has made it clear that Byron, at one time, read Buratti’s work with interest; but he has failed to show how the English poet could have acquired anything, either in matter or in style, from the Italian satirist.[272]

Of other Italian poems sometimes mentioned as possibly contributing something to _Don Juan_, no one is worth more than a cursory notice. _La Secchia Rapita_, by Tassoni (1565–1635), is a genuine mock-heroic, the model for Boileau’s _Lutrin_ and, to some extent, for Pope’s _Rape of the Lock_. So far as can be ascertained, Byron has no reference either to the author or to his poem; and since _La Secchia Rapita_ preserves consistently the grand style, applying it to trivial subjects, it has little in common with Byron’s satires.[273]

With _Il Ricciardetto_, by Forteguerri (1675–1735), Byron was better acquainted. Indeed Foscolo, without giving proof for his conclusion, suggested that it might have offered some ideas to the English writer. The Italian poem, completed about 1715, after having been composed, according to tradition, at the rate of a canto a day, contains thirty cantos in ottava rima. It is an avowed burlesque, in which heroes of Carolingian romance are degraded to buffoons, Rinaldo becoming a cook and Ricciardetto a barber. In it, as Foffano says, “the marvellous becomes absurd, the sublime, grotesque, and the heroic, ridiculous.” Forteguerri’s design, however, was not directly satiric, and he was seldom a destructive critic. His mission was solely to divert his readers. Byron refers to Lord Glenbervie’s rendering of the first canto of _Il Ricciardetto_ (1822) as most amusing,[274] but he seems to have had no great interest in the original.

A point has now been reached where it is practicable to frame some generalizations as to the extent and nature of Byron’s indebtedness to the Italians. For his subject-matter, he owed them something. The Catharine II episode in _Don Juan_ may have been suggested by _Il Poema Tartaro_; an occasional unimportant incident or situation may have been taken or modified from the work of Casti or Pulci. On the whole, however, Byron’s material was either original or drawn from other sources than the Italians. Even though Byron and Casti so frequently satirize the same institutions and theories, it is improbable that this is more than coincidence, the result of the natural opposition which similar abuses aroused in men so alike in temperament and intellect.

In his manner, however, Byron was profoundly affected, so much so that his own statement about _Beppo_--“The style is not English, it is Italian”--[275] is in exact accordance with the impression which _Beppo_, as well as _Don Juan_, makes on the reader. He learned, in part from Casti, and later from Berni and Pulci, the use of the burlesque method; he adopted their discursive style, with its opportunities for digression and self-assertion, and made it a channel for voicing his own beliefs as well as for speaking out against his enemies. Accepting the hint offered by their tendency to colloquial speech, he lowered the tone of his diction and addressed himself often directly to his readers. Moreover, he acquired the habit of shifting suddenly from seriousness to absurdity, from the pathetic to the grotesque, in the compass of a single stanza. His wrath, at first untempered, was now softened by a new attitude of skepticism which turned him more to irony and mockery than to violent rage.

In utilizing the octave for his own satires, he gave it a freedom of which it had never before been made capable in English; and, by a clever employment of double and triple rhymes, and by the constant use of run-on lines and stanzas, he adjusted the measure to the conversational flow of his verse.

At a time, then, when his youthful narrowness was developing into the maturity that comes only from experience, and when, therefore, he was most susceptible to broadening influences, Byron, fortunately for his satire, was brought into contact with the Italian spirit. The result was that _Don Juan_ joined many of the most powerful features of _English Bards_ with the lighter elements of Berni and Casti.

The beauty of Byron’s satire at its finest in _Don Juan_ and _The Vision of Judgment_, lies in the welding of the direct and indirect methods, in the interweaving of invective with burlesque, in such a way that the poems seem to link the spirit of Juvenal with the spirit of Pulci. The consequence is a variety of tone, a widening of scope, and a considerable increase in effectiveness. Byron’s general attacks are relieved from the charge of futility; his vindictiveness is mitigated by humor and a touch of the ridiculous; and his aggressiveness, though it does not disappear, is sometimes changed to a cynical tolerance.